Papers of science historian Philip (Fritz) Rehbock (1942-2002), known for his research on 19th century British naturalists, evolutionary theory, the Challenger expedition, and the history and science of the Pacific.
Philip F. Rehbock Papers, 1960-2001 (SMC 162)
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Philip Frederick (Fritz) Rehbock was a science historian and professor of history and general science at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Born in Seattle in 1942, he earned a B.S. in economics at Stanford University in 1964, spent six years in the U.S. Navy Supply Corps, and then earned a Ph.D. in the history of science at Johns Hopkins University in 1975. His dissertation, Organisms in Space and Time: Edward Forbes (1815-1854) and New Directions for Early Victorian Natural History was later expanded into The Philosophical Naturalists: Themes in Early Nineteenth-Century British Biology (1983). In 1974, his essay, "Huxley, Haeckel, and the Oceanographers: The Case of Bathybius haeckelii" was awarded the Henry and Ida Schuman Prize by the History of Science Society.
Rehbock was appointed assistant professor in the general science and history departments of the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1975, associate professor in 1983, and professor in 1992. He also served as assistant university marshal, acting associate dean of the College of Natural Sciences, assistant to the vice president for academic affairs, chair of the general science department, and graduate chair of the history department. He taught courses and graduate seminars in the history of science, ecology, and scientific literacy.
Rehbock edited the journals Isis, Hawaiian Journal of History, Biography, and Archives of Natural History. He also served as a member of the History of Science Society's Watson Davis Prize Committee and of the Hawaii Committee for the Humanities. In 1985, Rehbock and Roy MacLeod founded the Pacific Circle, an organization to promote research in the history and sciences of the Pacific region. The Pacific Circle became a scientific commission of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science in 1989. Rehbock served as vice-president of the Commission on Oceanography and editor of the Pacific Circle Newsletter and the Pacific Circle Bulletin.
The collaboration with Roy MacLeod on the Pacific Circle led to the publication of Nature in its Greatest Extent: Western Science in the Pacific (1988) and Darwin's Laboratory: Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific (1994). In 1992, Rehbock edited At Sea with the Scientifics: The Challenger Letters of Joseph Matkin while working as a research associate at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. At the time of his death, he left unfinished The Culture of Victorian Natural History, a prosopographical analysis on the characteristics of 19th century British botanists, geologists, and zoologists, and The Malvern Letters, a historical novel about Victorian naturalists.
Rehbock organized, chaired, and moderated many conferences and symposia on the history and philosophy of science. In 1991, he organized the Science and Culture symposium of the Seventeenth Pacific Science Congress held in Honolulu. In 1993, he co-chaired, with Keith Benson, the Fifth International Congress on the History of Oceanography, held at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. Rehbock and Benson edited the proceedings of ICHO V, which were published in 2002 as Oceanographic History: The Pacific and Beyond. Papers Presented at the Fifth International Congress on the History of Oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, 1993. Rehbock died in Honolulu in 2002.
Papers of science historian Philip (Fritz) Rehbock (1942-2002), known for his research on 19th century British naturalists, evolutionary theory, the Challenger expedition, and the history and science of the Pacific. The collection includes correspondence, writings, talks and lectures, teaching and project materials, conference planning materials, and photographs.
Arranged in five series: 1) CORRESPONDENCE, 2) WRITINGS, 3) PROJECTS, 4) TEACHING MATERIALS, and 5) CONFERENCES AND MEETINGS.